Tesla Model S Battery-Swaps May Be Dead, Before Ever Coming To Fruition

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As you may recall, when the Tesla Model S sedan was first put on sale, a rapid “battery-swap” functionality was advertised. This feature was promised to cut down dramatically on the time it takes to go from depleted to charged as the battery could simply be dropped from the vehicle and replaced with a fully charged one.

The comments came at Tesla Motors’ recent annual shareholder meeting, at which Autoblog reports Mr. Musk said the following:

We have, basically, the LA-to-San Francisco pack swap capability in place, and I believe all Model S owners in the California area have been invited at this point to try it out. And what we’re seeing is a very low take rate for the pack swap station. So we did an initial round of invitations, where we did basically, like, 200 invitations, and I think there were a total of four or five people that wanted to do that, and they all did it just once. So, like, okay, clearly it’s not very popular. And then we said, okay, let’s expand that invitation to all customers, but I would expect that all customers behave roughly like that initial sample group.

It’s just, people don’t care about pack swap. The Superchargers are fast enough that if you’re driving from LA to San Francisco, and you start a trip at 9 AM, by the time you get to, say, noon, you want to stop, and you want to stretch your legs, hit the restroom, grab a bite to eat, grab a coffee, and be on your way, and by that time, the car is charged and ready to go, and it’s free. So, it’s like, why would you do the pack swap? It doesn’t make much sense.

We built the pack swap into the car because we weren’t sure if people would want to choose the pack swap or not. We thought people would prefer Supercharging, but we weren’t sure, so that’s why we built the pack swap capability in. And, you know, based on what we’re seeing here, it’s unlikely to be something that’s worth expanding in the future, unless something changes.

It’s worth noting that beside the sufficient speed, availability, and freeness of Tesla’s supercharging stations, they hold another distinct advantage over the single pilot Tesla Model S battery-swap station in Harris Ranch, California: the battery-swap station requires an advance reservation. That one is required to schedule an appointment in order to have a fresh battery swapped-in arguably undermines the purpose of offering such and expedient means of “refuelling.”

Yours truly has also often wondered about the possibility of having someone else’s neglected, sub-par battery pack installed into your Tesla Model S.

You can watch CEO Elon Musk’s entire shareholder meeting speech at the Tesla Motors website, though you’ll want to skip ahead to around 1 hour and 10 minutes for the executive’s comments regarding the Tesla Model S pilot battery-swap program.

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— Aaron Birch

Aaron Birch is an automotive enthusiast and writer/filmmaker from Detroit, MI. As a rule, he only buys cars older than himself.

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3 Comments

“… not a single Tesla owner we spoke to in the course of our investigation had been invited to join the battery swap beta program or even knew how to receive an invite. Reyes tells Daily Kanban that invitations were sent to customers who have a history of using the Harris Ranch Superchargers, but several owners we spoke to had charged there before and had not received an invitation.”

“Reyes tells Daily Kanban that participating customers tell the company they prefer the Supercharger experience to battery swap, echoing Musk’s tweet that “Supercharging is the future… for non-commercial traffic.” However, several of the Tesla owners we spoke with over the weekend said they would appreciate having the option to swap batteries. One Tesla owner called the battery swap option a “no brainer,” pointing out that “every hour we wait here is an hour my kids won’t sleep.” Another said “if it’s not available why did they announce it?”

In the course of the investigation! HA how laughable. Maybe that’s because they were closed! The “author” of the “investigation” even admitted that he knew that exchange would be closed Memorial Day weekend. You got trolled Aaron!

Yours truly has also often wondered about the possibility of having someone else’s neglected, sub-par battery pack installed into your Tesla Model S.
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That was never going to be a possibility. You weren’t getting someone else’s battery swapped into your car. The swapped battery pack was always a temporary replacement until some time you could return for your original battery pack.